


Raphael sat on a wall

by sweetNsimple



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale and Crowley are Raphael, Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Heaven and Hell are manipulative, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 03:46:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19348849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetNsimple/pseuds/sweetNsimple
Summary: Raphael had a great Fall...Half went up and half went down,And all of Heaven's angels and all of Hell's demons,Tried to make sure Raphael was never put back together again.~::~“A pity I can’t just inhabit your body,” Aziraphale joked, wavering between dimensions like a mirage – or, worse, a drunken hallucination.Aziraphale was saying, “We’d probably explode.”“Let’s do it.”“Beg your pardon?”





	Raphael sat on a wall

“A pity I can’t just inhabit your body,” Aziraphale joked, wavering between dimensions like a mirage – or, worse, a drunken hallucination. 

 _Well_ , the heavily inebriated Crowley – demon of Hell, the Creator of the Original Sin, the Serpent of Eden, the Inventor of Minor Inconveniences – thought.  _That’s not on._

Aziraphale was saying, “We’d probably explode.”

“Let’s do it.”

“Beg your pardon?”

Crowley drummed his hands on the table and swayed in place.  In his current state of mind, what he wanted most above all else was proof that Aziraphale was _actually_ there.  This, he stupidly believed, was the quickest and most efficient ways.  And!  _And_ it would be hard to lose Aziraphale again if they were in the same body.  He felt rather clever reasoning like that.  “Get in here.  I am…. Very receptive.”

“For Heaven’s sake, Crowley, you’re drunk.”

“I am wide open.”

“Please take this seriously, my dear boy.”

“I am _so_ serious right now.”

“We might explode!  Today is Armageddon, it is happening very soon.  We have to get a wiggle on!”

“Don’t leave me,” Crowley begged, which was easy to do when he had no pride and was totally pissed after crawling to the bottom of several bottles.  “I thought you died.  You might _still_ be dead, y’know?  This could all just be a, a dream.  Nightmare, or something.”

“Oh, darling…”  Aziraphale wavered and flickered.  “We really shouldn’t.  This is the absolute _worst_ time to blow up.”

“Come ooon.  End of the world today!  We’ve gotta get a, a, y’know.”  He circled his wrist and flopped his hand sloppily.

“A wiggle on.”

“Yeah, I’m not saying that.”

Aziraphale still looked doubtful.  “If this goes wrong, I want you to know that it is solely your fault for encouraging this.”

“Got it, understood, yeah.”  He spread his arms out.  “Come here, angel.  Let’s go supernova.”

“That is _not_ comforting.”  Nonetheless, expression saying he would rather not, Aziraphale slipped into him.

There was a ball of burning energy that squeezed in next to his own demonic energies.  It was a very tight fit and his human body felt too constricting as two beings who were larger than the whole Earth tried to fit semi-comfortably in a 184 centimeters tall man-shaped container.

There was internal struggle of _‘Ow!  Get your tails out of my eyeballs!’_

_‘Why do you have so bloody many of them?’_

_‘To see more, of course.’_

_‘Get your wings out of my mouth!’_

_‘Which one?  You don’t even like to eat, why do you have a hundred of them?’_

_‘The better to tell you off with, angel, obviously.’_

_‘Oh, hah hah.’_

And then, suddenly, something between their splintered edges caught on one another and slotted perfectly, familiarly, into place.

In the physical realm of existence, the body of Antony J. Crowley had collapsed to the ground and been comatose for so long that the bartender was attempting CPR.

Imagine the bartender’s surprise when the drunk ginger’s eyes shot open and glowed, from corner to corner, pure gold, and two voices said at once, **“Well.  We didn’t see _that_ coming, did we, dearest?”**  Those terrible eyes focused on the trembling bartender.  **“What the Hell do you want?  Now, my dear boy, please don’t be rude.  He kissed us.  There must be a reasonable explanation for it.  Oi, why’d you kiss us?”**

The man was understandably too terrified to answer.

**“It doesn’t matter.  We have to go.  We must stop the apocalypse!  What time is it?  Don’t you dare say it.  Why, my darling, it’s time to get a wiggle on.  Oh, no, no, no – now you’re just saying it to annoy me.”**

The ginger with two voices picked himself off the floor and swaggered out the door. 

“Did anyone else – ?”  The barkeep looked around for an eyewitness and found none.  Not another soul had paid attention to the blubbering redhead since the moment he ordered his first bottle.

~::~

It would be best to explain a bit.

A little over six millennia ago, the archangel Raphael was being torn in two.  God did not have much to do with it so much.  In fact, it was Michael who held Raphael by one wrist and Samael who was trying to drag Raphael down by the other. 

 **“You’re tearing me apart!”** Raphael was screaming.  Neither archangel listened.

 **“Raphael shall stay with the Heavenly Host!”** Michael screeched.  **“They are Good!”**

 **“Raphael shall die for betraying me!”** Samael roared.  They did not want Raphael in Hell so much as they wanted Raphael to stop existing entirely.  Samael had thought that Raphael stood with them and their ideologies. 

Samael was spitting mad when Raphael refused to fight with them in the Great Revolution.  As a matter of fact, Raphael refused to fight at all.  Samael was livid by the healer’s cowardice.

In actuality, Raphael was not a coward so much as they simply did not understand why there had to be a war and why they couldn’t all get along.  Raphael thought that Good and Bad should exist side by side so that they always had the freedom of choice.  To have just Good or just Bad would limit what one could do. 

 **“Stop this!”** Raphael cried.  Something was tearing straight down their center.  **“Let me go!”**

There was more the sensation of something ripping than the actual sound of it.  As if a hole had been torn into the fabric of space and time and the shape of it touched Michael and Samael simultaneously. 

Samael fell, a small snake with a hundred mouths clutched in one of his large fists.

Michael ascended, a flickering orb of light in their hundreds of open palms. 

Michael stared down into it.

“Ah, hello,” said the half-formed angel, no more powerful than a Principality.  “Who am I, exactly?” 

 **“You are…”** And then Michael lied.   **“Aziraphael.”** Michael took the Principality and introduced them to the other archangels.  There were no words exchanged, but it was unanimously decided that no one would mention Raphael or the half of Raphael that Fell with Samael.

Meanwhile, in Hell, Samael was also lying. 

“Oi, why am I here?” the serpent demanded to know.  “Who am I supposed to be?”

Samael smiled.  “You are Crawly,” they drawled with humor.  “And you are a demon of Hell.”

“A demon?  What shit is that?”

“We are castaways of Heaven.  Made to Fall by God.”

“Why?”

Samael grit dagger-like teeth.  “For asking questions.”

Crawly shut up. 

Not much later, an angel in a pale human body with wings stood at the Eastern Gate.  A snake slithered to his side and they watched solemnly as Adam and Eve struggled through the desert.

“Well,” said Crawly, “that went down like a lead balloon.” 

~::~

The thing about them getting used to being in one tiny body was that it took longer than they expected it to.  Memories and abilities they had discovered as they blended and convalesced had demanded their attention, prompting a debate of God’s-Plans-Are-Innefable-And-Beyond-Our-Understanding-But-Would-It-Really-Be-So-Hard-To-Tell-Us-The-Truth-Every-Once-In-Awhile.  

By the time they arrived at Lower Tadfield Airbase, Adam and the Them had already dispelled of three of the Horsemen, Death had departed on wings of night, and Gabriel and Beelzebub were frothing at the mouths to find someone to blame as they scurried back to their respective bosses to update them on the situation.

The ground was quaking.  Anethema felt in her very bones that something huge and angry was about to rise up from the depths of Hell and they would suffer the consequences of not letting Earth fall to ruin.

“Adam!” she screamed.  “Do something!” 

The boy looked at her with unfathomable blue eyes.  “But I’m just a kid.”  His friends were grabbing hold of him to keep their legs beneath them.  Adam Young – The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of this world, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness – was afraid.  Somehow, when those strange occult figures had threatened to tell his father, he got the feeling they weren’t talking about Arthur Young.

A mighty red monster erupted from the concrete, a crown of horns about its head and eyes as dark as every tragedy that had ever occurred in the history of the Universe.  Immense, scaly wings swept across the airbase. 

 **“Where is my son?”** demanded the horrid beast, Satan them-self.  Their pitch black eyes found Adam.  **“Y-”**

Adam was in a desert.  White-gold sand shifted beneath his feet and the sky was endlessly blue.  He frowned as he looked about, but did not see his friend, the airbase, Anethema and her friend, or Lucifer. 

He found, instead, a redheaded man with golden eyes.  He had two pairs of wings, one set white and the other black, and was holding sunglasses loosely in one hand.  **“I actually have more wings than this,”** he said.  **“More everything, really.  Human bodies are really constricting, doesn’t allow much for letting the real us show through.  We have to tell him about his control over reality.  He can still stop this.  Yeah, yeah, we _know_.  My darling boy, tell him.”**

“I’m confused,” Adam admitted.  “You sound like two people, but there’s only one of you.”

The creature – angel?  Demon?  God?  – smiled and it was a sad expression.  **“That happens when you’re in two halves for six millennia and no one bothers to tell you.  Now, we have us outside of Time, but we can’t keep us here for long.”**

They told Adam about not being Hell Incarnate or Heaven Incarnate.  **“You are Human Incarnate,”** they said with loving eyes.  **“Reality will listen to you right now.”**

They flapped their wings and, in a swirl of dust, Adam was facing the perturbed King of Hell.

 **“Raphael?”** said Lucifer.  **“That’s not possible.  You were torn in two millennia ago.”**

 **“And my two parts found each other again,”** said Raphael, teeth bared in a grin.  **“Funny that we didn’t even know we were incomplete until we were whole again.  You knew?”**

 **“I can be the only archangel in Hell,”** Lucifer roared.  **“I will not stand for rivalry!”**   His gargantuan head swung toward Adam.  **“You will do as you are told, boy, and bring about the apocalypse.”**

Adam took a deep breath.  “You’re not my dad,” he stated with no room for speculation to all of reality. 

Perhaps no one was as relieved or terrified as him when reality listened to him and Satan crumbled to dust as he was dragged back to Hell by the forces of gravity only to reveal Adam’s real father driving toward him. 

~::~

Raphael lounged on the bench, waiting for a bus Oxford-bound to drive them to London.  Hell, they knew, would leave them be as Lucifer would not welcome the archangel – fully or half-Fallen as it were – back, even for corporal punishment.  Heaven might try something, and Hell would probably tell them where to find Aziraphale.

It didn’t seem likely that anything they did would be effective.  Infernal Flames did nothing to demons and Holy Water did nothing to angels and Raphael was both and neither at the same time.

He put his sunglasses on.

 **“Are we alright, my dear?  We’re just… adjusting, is all.  Really.  We fell in love with each other when we were two tattered pieces of a whole.  We wanted to try human things like kissing and nesting together.  We wanted more smiles and dinners next to each other at the Ritz.  We did alright as two occult beings, didn’t we?  Ethereal, darling.  Whichever.  Well…  There is nothing saying that we _can’t_ have those things.  Oh, that is _naughty_.”  **They raised a hand and snapped their fingers.  By the powers given to them as an archangel – half-Fallen, half-Holy – their human body bulged and flickered and separated into two.  One was the redhead Crowley and the other the fair blonde Aziraphale. 

They gave each other knowing, coy looks. 

When they held hands, sparks shot up and their eyes sparkled gold.  “Much less conspicuous like this, isn’t it?” said the half named Aziraphale.  “It would look a bit odd if we went on a date and talked to our-self.”

“We’re talking to our-self right now, angel.”

“At least it _looks_ like we are two separate entities.”  He gestured to the bus’s open door.  “Shall we proceed to our apartment?”

“Sure.  Tomorrow, we’ll see what’s left of our bookshop.  Maybe it didn’t all burn down.”

“We are ever so hopeful.”

They sat down next to each other on the bus, foreheads touching as they spoke.  **“We are on our side,”** they said. 

Raphael, who was both Aziraphale and Crowley, stayed hand-in-hand and temple-to-temple the whole way home.

**Author's Note:**

> As someone who fully endorses Crowley as Raphael, I thought I would try my hand at the theory that Aziraphale and Crowley are both Raphael and that they were split in two at the end of the Revolution.


End file.
